False Perceptions
by TheRandomPhangirl
Summary: Everything was working out fine for Danny. Sure, he might get roughed up a bit in his fights, and sure he might need to ask for help a bit more often. but he was doing remarkably well. But something keeps nagging at him in the back of his head. What will this next adventure lead to? Please let me know what you think! (ON PERMANENT HIATUS, MAY BE ADAPTED LATER)
1. The Crow That Waits

Danny could barely walk straight. The ground swirled and his head spun.

"Are you ok?" Jazz asked as Danny stumbled through the front door. Danny tried to answer but the confusing pain in his head just hurt so much he couldn't manage to from all of his words correctly. All Jazz heard was a mumble, and somewhere in it the words sounded like "fine... bad fight..." Jazz had to catch Danny as he managed to trip over the tile that marked the start of the kitchen.

"You aren't fine, Danny." She wrapped an arm around him and led him towards the stairs. Danny knew there was no way he could manage the steps, and shrugged out of his sister's caring embrace. Besides, he knew where he needed -wanted- to be.

"Leave me alone." He grumbled and walked back into the kitchen. This time he managed to step over the beginning of the tile and made his way towards the basement door.

"Mom and Dad aren't home." Jazz reminded with a hint of concern.

"I was counting on that."

He held the railing in a death grip as the world seemed to pitch downwards. Even though everything sounded like it was underwater, Jazz's soft steps behind him could be heard. "She just won't give up. All I want is some peace." Danny thought as he made it onto flat ground. Spontaneous green glows lined the walls beside him, but the only thing Danny was focused on was the swirling vortex at the other end. But Jazz was persistent.

"Where are you going? You're in no shape to go into the Ghost Zone." His condition was actually the reason why Danny was going where he was.

"I need peace and quiet. Why don't you understand that?" Danny snapped. Jazz looked like she had just swallowed a lemon.

"Fine." She exasperated. "Do what you want. I just wanted to help." She turned her back and stomped back up to the stairs. But even in her anger, she looked back at Danny before ascending.

In the back of his mind, Danny knew he shouldn't've done that, but he continued on his way. The sounds of the youngest Fenton's steps stopped right before he tumbled into the glowing, swirling, ever-changing mass of green and black swirls that made up the link between Earth and the Ghost Zone. Danny took a deep breath and summoned all of the energy he could to form the familiar white rings that he loved so much. The cool feeling the light brought spread over him. The cold was welcoming, like walking in front of a fireplace after a snowball fight. Now in Danny Fenton's place stood Danny Phantom, the ghostly hero of Amity Park.

This other Danny took an unnecessary breath and stepped forward into the portal. The feeling of vertigo was washed away as he opened his eyes. After all, here there was no gravity to have to keep balance to, and he need not worry about the ground swirling beneath him, as here it would do so no matter what. Danny let out his breath. A blue mist came out along with it. Normally that mist, labeled Danny's "Ghost Sense" would cause Danny's, albeit already low, heart rate to increase, but here in the GZ, he would be more worried if it didn't go off. Danny propelled himself forward effortlessly through the thick "air?" Although the prospect of just drifting through empty space was appealing, Danny had somewhere he wanted to go that drew his attention even more.

And so Danny drifted past door upon door until he reached one that had a faint, small snowflake encircled by what seemed to be a hoolahoop, on the door itself and a small, engraved DF on the handle. Danny pulled on it and the chill that met him at the threshold was amazing. Danny floated in and shut the door behind him. He let go of his flight and drifted down until he settled upon what seemed to be a snowbank, but in reality was a white, fluffy blanket atop a king size bed. Danny Phantom reverted to Fenton and settled himself upon the bed. His head still spun, but the comfort of being in his own space led his eyes to droop. Danny knew it wasn't good to sleep after you've hit your head, but he couldn't help it. He was in his own safe-space, his lair.

Danny had restful dreams. And while he did, he let his body heal. All of his pain melted away and he eventually drifted further, and further, until he was rudely awoken.

"Danny?... Wake up!" The feminine voice ordered. When he didn't respond the voice's owner started shaking his shoulder. "Get up you-you teenager!" That was an insult if Danny'd ever heard one.

"What do you want?" He grumbled and looked over his shoulder. He also found it odd that he'd rolled over in his sleep. he didn't think he did that. It was odd to think that people did tons of things that they'd never notice, or wouldn't notice until it was pointed out. He then found that the owner of the voice was indeed a girl, and had a very familiar face.

"Danielle?! What are you doing here?" He sprung into a sitting position and pulled his blanket up to his neck, before realizing he was still wearing his normal, albeit unusually dirty, clothes, not his "pajamas."

"Where is "here?" Danielle air-quoted.

"What do you mean?"

In his half-asleep, fifteen-year-old daze Danny forgot that he hadn't known what a lair was until a little while ago. He rubbed his eyes and finally looked around. Everything was a mess. Gone were the lazily-drifting snowflakes, and now the entire expanse of the world seemed to be a desert in a blizzard of neon cotton balls. Danny panicked at the sudden color and everything around his bed, which was oddly exactly the same as he'd left it, froze.

"What did you do?" Danielle asked. She seemed panicked.

"Calm down. I'll explain." Danny urged her. And so he did. Danielle sat down next to him on the bed and listened with rapt attention. Danny allowed himself a moment to rub his dully-aching head before he lent out a much-needed explanation.

"So you came through the door, yes?" Danny asked. The gender-bent clone nodded. "This is my, or it seems, our, lair. I don't know how exactly it is "ours," but a lair is a place where someone, namely a ghost, can have a place where they can change everything and anything they want. It's like a video game but the world is created as you go along."

"Huh. Cool." Dani replied.

"But that doesn't explain why you're in a bed looking like you just woke up from a hangover." She snickered.

"Hah. That'd probably be better than a headache I have right now. But I don't know what that feels like and neither should you." Danny glared at the girl who was, if Danny was going by the age Dani looked, not how long she'd been alive, only about thirteen. And under the legal drinking age of every country, he could think of except Germany. He was pretty sure they were very 'lax about alcohol.

"Overprotective much? It's just a joke. But still, why do you look so bad?" Dani pushed for more details on what she most likely hoped was some drama. Living alone and traveling the world was probably pretty boring.

"I just had a bad fight. Came here to recover." Danielle looked a bit disappointed at Danny's response. She'd probably been hoping more something more "world-in-peril-y."

"Oh. Well. I gotta go, but do you mind if I stop in here every once in a while?" Danielle sputtered out. She looked over her shoulder at the door that floated in the air for a moment before looking back to Danny for his answer.

"It's your space too. Just try not to change the snowflakes into neon cotton balls again." The world suddenly turned white and the sand seemed to melt away, replaced by piles of snow.

"Cousin's honor." Danielle winked and flew up to meet the door, her black glove contrasting against the silver metal.

Danny collapsed back into the softness of his bed. Explanations were hard when you had a splitting headache. But something nagged at him. How had Dani appeared so suddenly, and why did she disappear so fast? He shrugged it off -OW his shoulder still hurt- and closed his eyes again. Some mysteries could only be dealt with until one was in proper health. Danny barely remembered to create an alarm set to go off ten minutes before his curfew before nodding off again.

As Danny drifted peacefully off into the world of dreams, a much more malicious entity lies just outside of the silver, newly-marked door. The human-figured entity wore a flowing black cloak that covered almost all of his back except a pair of black, glossy wings that were currently folded in wait. Amidst the black a small, embroidered X was nestled into the fabric of the entity's red striped top-hat. _This was going to be fun._


	2. A Long Day Ahead

Danny stuck his head out of the portal cautiously. No one was there, luckily. He tiptoed up the stairs, not wanting to let his parents know where he was before he remembered he could turn invisible. And so he did. Invisibly, he walked to the front door, then through it. After that he opened the door normally. Then his watch beeped at him. He had woken up just in time.

"Danny-o! Just who I wanted to see! Good job on not being late! And doing your chores!" Jack beamed. Had Danny done his chores earlier? He shrugged and guessed he had. Jack quickly gave Danny a push to go on and get to bed. Literally.

The next day started off more normal than not, and Danny hoped it would stay that way. He'd actually managed to get some breakfast this morning before running through the door to go catch Klemper, who was starting to get on his nerves. Danny sighed as he tucked the not-so-empty Fenton thermos into his bag. _He'd just have to wait until later_.

"Good morning." Techno-geek Tucker greeted cheerily.

"What are you so happy about. We're all gonna die." Yeesh. Something must've really got Sam mad.

"What's got your cape in a bundle?" Danny asked, curious. In response, the goth just raised her arms and made a sound eerily similar to that of a dying seal.

"Bad morning?" Tucker asked.

"The worst. She tried to make me wear PINK again." Sam scrunched her nose and it looked like she'd just tasted something really sour. The goth sighed and turned to Danny and Tucker. The trio were standing by Sam's locker, right outside of Mr. Lancer's classroom. "Enough with my issues, how you guys been?"

"The usual. But I'm still mad you beat me in Doomed last night." Tucker slouched to emphasize his displeasure at being beaten in his favorite game by a _girl_. Sure, it'd hurt Danny's pride when he'd found out Sam was the person behind the one avatar who'd killed him the most, but he'd gotten over it. Tucker seemed to be having a bit tougher of a time.

"C'mon, my friend. You gotta let it go that I'm just better at video games than you are." Sam's smirk was sinister as she looped an arm over Tucker's shoulders.

"You're really insufferable, you know."

"Ooh, big words. But you know you love me."

"Even more reason for you to let me win."

"But then how else would you learn?"

Danny smirked at Sam and Tucker's almost sibling-like argument and wandered over to his own locker, fumbling with the combination before it opened with a satisfying click and he began grabbing the homework that he had miraculously managed to finish that morning. Danny wondered about his own familial relationships, almost shaking his head in disgust at his almost imaginary relationship with his parents. To be honest, they'd probably forget he existed if they didn't live under the same roof.

"Hey, Danny-" Tucker's voice invaded his thoughts. "Mind if I copy?" Tucker snatched the paper from Danny's hand without his response and began scanning over it after he sat back down at his desk. Funny- Danny hadn't noticed sitting down. He hadn't even noticed walking away from his locker. Maybe he should get some more sleep.

"Your bell work is on the board." Mr. Lancer reminded the half-awake students as the vestiges of conversation faded. Mr. Lancer could be kind when he needed to be, he was human, after all. But most considered him to be a bit on the stricter side. He expected quite a bit from his students, but he always wanted to help if one of his pupils were struggling. Danny had learned that first hand, along with the fact that the overweight teacher also played Doomed. Danny shook himself out of his head a stared down at his blank paper. It was going to be a long day.


	3. I Hate Math

Danny was entirely correct in his previous statement. Luckily, he went without homework in English, but, alas, he was not quite so lucky in algebra.

"For tonight, I want you to do page two seventy, 2 through 45, evens." Most of the class groaned in response. Ms. Merriweather was just cruel. It was a running joke amongst the students to say that her name was a lie, she was not at all merry. She might not have been Danny's favorite teacher, but she didn't deserve all of the misdirected hate from the students. They really only seemed to care about her when she promised cookies or brownies if everyone passed the next test. Danny's eyes wandered from where the teacher was writing the homework on a piece of paper, the act mirrored over the projector, and wandered to her desk.

Many students who actually enjoyed her classes, or at least didn't hate the not-so-young educator, had done drawings that had then been pinned to the front of the desk by magnets. Amongst the mess, Danny spotted the accurate, or at least as much so as could be done by hand, star map of how the sky had looked on the teacher's birthday. Danny would've done the sky's arrangements on the teacher's birth, but Teachers were so against sharing their actual age with students. He sighed and opened his agenda. He hoped that Social Studies wouldn't be as bad. The teacher was notorious for assigning an essay that would be due in two days with no class time to work on it.

Danny's next two classes gladly didn't add on any more homework. Although, he did have to excuse himself in the middle of a test in Spanish to go to 'the bathroom.'

"What do you want, Skulker?" He asked.

"Your pelt!" The mechanical ghost launched himself toward Danny. The two were floating a hundred or so feet above the school's rooftops.

"No small talk, did I make you mad or somethin'?" Danny dodged a blast sent his way.

"Your voice is what's angering me!" Skulker's strategy got sloppy. Whatever was really making him mad must be really bad.

"Ooh! Big words!" Danny plagarized and patronized. That got a low growl out of Skulker and a large missile aimed at Danny's head. "Ok, really, did Ember dump you again?" Danny asked as he dodged. He was a bit tired of Skulker and Johnny using him as a punching bag whenever they had relationship troubles. But at least it was better than either of them taking their anger out on other people.

"Maybe." Skulker's expression turned nutral for a moment and he paused his barrage of missiles and blasts. "But that is none of your concern!" The attacks and the anger resumed. But Skulker was, as said before, being sloppy, and his aim was off, along with him not being as defensive as he should be. Danny's keen eyes noticed and all it took was a well-aimed blast of ice to clog one of Skulker's guns, which then blew up in a cloud of green smoke. Skulker coughed and fell to his knees on an imaginary ground. Before he could right himself, he was in the thermos. Danny sunk down through the school's rooftops to the bathroom on the first floor. This location further enforced his alibi and gave him a private-enough place to transform. Danny Fenton sighed and walked back to the classroom. Then the bell rung. He'd have to finish the test in study hall, instead of working on his math homework. At least now he'd have a chance to unwind with Tuck and Sam.


	4. Flaming Fury

"Heya, Danny." Tucker greeted.  
"Hola." Danny grinned slightly, it was still fun using words in a different language, even if almost anyone with a brain -in Amity Park, anyways- knew what that one meant. "Someone's seeming happier." Danny pointed down the hall at Sam as she came to greet them. She had a grin on her face, it was slightly alarming.  
"Sam, you're doing the creepy face again."  
"Am I?"  
"Yes. Knock it off."  
"Why are you smiling?" Danny interjected. Sam's grin only widened.  
"BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE!" The cafeteria doors slammed open. Danny and co. turned to stare at whoever had made the noise. Their expressions were vastly different, from Sam, unsuccessfully, holding in a laugh, to Tucker grinning like an idiot at their teacher's rotten luck, to Danny looking horrified.

All eyes in the cafeteria were trained on the overweight teacher at the doors. He was running in an all-out sprint, surprising everyone. He was covered in dust and dirt, while the Box Ghost trailed behind him.  
"How dare you abuse these poor babies in such a way!" The Box Ghost's voice shook with blind fury and it seemed that blue flames licked up his arms and legs. The horrified teacher was still running and tried to open one of the outside doors, it seemed. But somebody must've triggered the school's new security system, and it locked all of the doors.  
"What did he do to make you so mad?" Sam asked in Boxy's general direction. Danny looked around and saw many students, the ones who hadn't run away, at least, were staring at Sam addressing the ghost. Danny wasn't quite sure what to do. Did Sam want him to wait until she calmed Boxy down? Or was she just stalling?

Just as Boxy noticed Sam's words, Danny slightly poked her in the shoulder. But she didn't notice because she was listening to the Box Ghost's reply.  
"That monster tried to throw this poor box into the trash bin! He could've at least put it into the recycling!" In his spectral hand was the "poor box." There was nothing wrong with it really, except for a spot where you could see it had been wet, and the flaps were torn a bit. If Danny tilted his head a bit, he could just make out the words 'Evolution of Poetry.' Looked like it had been formerly filled with the textbooks they'd received earlier that day.

Sam was about to say something more, but Danny spoke first. He could hear Sam grinding her teeth, but he just wanted this over with and the chance to eat his lunch for once. The cafeteria was mostly empty by now, anyways. The only ones they could see were Dash and Kwan staring from behind an overturned table, and Mr. Lancer scrambling to his feet to join the jocks.  
"Ok, what do you want, Boxy?" Danny asked, boredom present in his voice.  
"I want that monster of a human to right his wrong!" Well, that seemed simple enough. "Mr. Lancer, could you come over here?" Danny asked. The overgrown scaredy-cat looked like he'd sooner need a change of pants, but he walked over as Danny asked. Danny was a Fenton, after all. He placed himself slightly behind and between Tucker and Danny. The latter then turned back to the ghost who's flaming-ness seemed to have died down a little. The cafeteria was now only slightly more blue than the normal light cast from the fluorescent light bulbs. "Would you please hand the box back to Mr. Lancer, so he can put it where it belongs?" The Box Ghost agreed happily and the moderately-sized box was dropped into the teacher's arms. Danny could hear the teacher gasp at the freezing temperature spike when his fingers brushed against Boxy's during the transaction. The teacher slightly stared at Danny before he gave him the hint and pointed towards the recycling bin. Mr. Lancer understood and dumped the container into the blue reseptical.

The flames immediately dissipated and The Box Ghost hummed a happy tune as he phased through the doors.


End file.
